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It is now well known that the mid-ocean flow is almost everywhere domi nated by so-called synoptic or meso-scale eddies, rotating about nearly vertical axes and extending throughout the water column. A typical mid ocean horizontal scale is 100 km and a time scale is 100 days: these meso scale eddies have swirl speeds of order 10 cm s -1 which are usually con siderably greater than the long-term average flow. Many types of eddies with somewhat different scales and characteristics have been identified. The existence of such eddies was suspected by navigators more than a century ago and confirmed by the world of C. O'D. Iselin and V. B. Stock man in the 1930's. Measurements from RIV Aries in 1959/60, using the then newly developed neutrally buoyant floats, indicated the main char acteristics of the eddies in the deep ocean of the NW Atlantic while a se ries of Soviet moored current-meter arrays culminated, in POLYGON- 1970, in the explicit mapping of an energetic anticyclonic eddy in the tropical NE Atlantic. In 1973 a large collaborative (mainly U. S. , U. K. ) program, MODE-I, produced synoptic charts for an area of the NW At lantic and confirmed the existence of an open ocean eddy field and es tablished its characteristics. Meso-scale eddies are now known to be of interest and importance to marine chemists and biologists as well as to physical oceanographers and meteorologists.
List of contents
1. Overview and Summary of Eddy Science.- Regional Kinematics, Dynamics, and Statistics.- 2. Gulf Stream Rings.- 3. Western North Atlantic Interior.- 4. The Western North Atlantic - A Lagrangian Viewpoint.- 5. The Local Dynamics of Eddies in the Western North Atlantic.- 6. Gulf Stream Variability.- 7. The Northeast Atlantic Ocean.- 8. Eddy Structure of the North Pacific Ocean.- 9. Subpolar Gyres and the Arctic Ocean.- 10. Tropical Equatorial Regions.- 11. Eddies in the Indian Ocean.- 12. The South Pacific Including the East Australian Current.- 13. Eddies in the Southern Indian Ocean and Agulhas Current.- 14. The Southern Ocean.- 15. Global Summaries and Intercomparisons: Flow Statistics from Long-Term Current Meter Moorings.- 16. Global Summary: Review of Eddy Phenomena as expressed in Temperature Measurements.- Models.- 17. Eddy-Resolving Numerical Models of Large-Scale Ocean Circulation.- 18. Periodic and Regional Models.- Effects and Applications.- 19. Eddies in Relation to Climate.- 20. Eddies and Coastal Interactions.- 21. Eddy-Induced Dispersion and Mixing.- 22. Eddies and Biological Processes.- 23. Eddies and Acoustics.- 24. Instruments and Methods.- References.
